“Where is Trump?” Sheriff Arpaio Asks

Sheriff Arpaio points finger at Obama holdovers in DOJ

WASHINGTON, D.C. – After being convicted of criminal misdemeanor contempt, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has come out swinging, arguing the judge was biased and asking why President Trump is abandoning him, considering Arpaio was an early campaign supporter whose conviction reflects the determination to enforce immigration laws the Trump Justice Department is now exhibiting.

“Where is President Trump on this case?” Arpaio asked Infowars.com in an exclusive interview. “This is a witch hunt against me that is being carried forward by Obama holdovers in Attorney General Sessions’ Department of Justice.”

“I’m being convicted for honestly trying to enforce the immigration laws that Trump swore during the campaign he would uphold if elected president,” Arpaio insisted.

Arpaio was one of Trump’s early supporters, endorsing Trump formally in a statement issued on Jan. 27, 2016.

“Donald Trump is a leader. He produces results and is ready to get tough in order to protect American jobs and families,” Arpaio said in a statement released by Trump’s campaign at that time. “I have fought on the front lines to prevent illegal immigration. I know Donald Trump will stand with me and countless Americans to secure our border.”

Starting in January 2016, Arpaio began appearing with Trump at campaign rallies, endorsing Trump’s promise to “build a wall” as a needed measure to enforce aggressively immigration laws already on the books.

“I have great respect for Sheriff Arpaio,” Trump said in an official campaign statement, accepting Arpaio’s endorsement. “We must restore law and order on the border and respect the men and women of our police forces. I thank him for his support of my policies and candidacy for president.”

“A biased judge”

Arpaio’s attorney, Mark Goldman, Goldman & Zillinger PLLC in Scottsdale, Ariz., explained to Infowars.com in an exclusive telephone interview and follow-up email that the judge in the case, U.S. District Susan R. Bolton, was so biased against Arpaio that she could have written her opinion before the trial even started, stating her prejudice from the start that Arpaio was guilty of misdemeanor civil contempt guilty conviction.

“The court, in its findings of fact and conclusions of law totally ignored all of the overwhelming evidence at trial that exonerated the Sheriff,” Goldman told Infowars.com. “Most importantly, there was no testimony or other evidence produced that in any way proved that the order was ‘clear and definite’ which it must be in order to prove that the order could be disobeyed in the first place.”

“Not only did the government fail to prove that the order was clear and definite, we proved that it was not clear and definite,” Goldman insisted. “The government’s own star witness, Tim Casey, admitted under cross-examination that the order was ‘ambiguous.’ Just about every witness testified that the order was misunderstood at the time. No one testified that the order was clear and definite.”

Goldman explained that the Obama Department of Justice had charged Arpaio under the wrong statute, both because the statute of limitations had run out on the correct statute and by charging Arpaio under the wrong statute, Judge Bolton could deny him a jury trial.

“There was not testimony that the Sheriff ever told anyone that he was violating or going to violate the order,” he said. “The government had the FBI and the DOJ working on this case, yet they couldn’t find one person to state that the Sheriff ever suggested that he’d violate the order.”

“Finally, it was proved at the trial that no one at the Sheriff’s department understood the voluminous 40-page order while it was in effect,” Goldman argued. “Only in hindsight did they learn what the order meant after the Melendres court issued a subsequent order!”

Arpaio’s attorneys are in the process of appealing the misdemeanor criminal court conviction that has the possibility of forcing him to serve jail time, depending upon the sentencing order Judge Snow is expected to order on Oct. 5, 2017, after the DOJ probation department prepares its presentence investigation report.

An Obama DOJ revenge prosecution

The case against Arpaio began with the 2007 traffic stop that resulted in the arrest of Ortega Melendres, a Mexican tourist who was a passenger in an automobile stopped in Cave Creek, Maricopa County.

Melendres charged the Maricopa County sheriff’s officers were “fundamentally stopping brown-skinned people with the pretext of looking for criminals.”

The case developed into a class action lawsuit that caught the attention of Tom Perez, then in the Civil Rights division of the Obama Justice Department.

Arpaio, a target of the Obama administration for years because of his determination to enforce strictly existing immigration laws, was seen by Perez as implementing in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) a “systematic policy” that set law enforcement rules and procedures to be intentionally discriminatory to the rights of Hispanics.

Perez began his legal career as a LaRaza attorney in Maryland. He currently is Chair of the Democratic National Committee, a major force in moving the Democratic Party in a hard-left direction.

On Oct. 2, 2013, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ruled that Arpaio and his agency had relied on racial profiling and illegal detentions to target Hispanic.

Snow ordered Arpaio to make mandatory changes in MCSO office law enforcement procedures, requiring officers to radio the basis for each traffic stop before contacting people in the vehicle, the video recording of all traffic stops, increased training for and monitoring of MCSO office employees, and the implementation of comprehensive record keeping.

On May 12, 2016, Judge Snow held Arpaio in civil contempt of federal court, ruling that Arpaio an three of his aides violated the judge’s 2013 order that was meant to curtail “racial profiling” by MCSO officers.

Now at 85-years-old, after a distinguished career that includes service in the U.S. Army from 1950-1953, service as a police officer in Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, Nevada, as well as working as a federal narcotics agent and the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for Arizona, Arpaio faces criminal charges that could see him convicted to six-months in jail if found guilty.

Largely as a result of the adverse publicity from facing criminal contempt charges, Arpaio lost on Nov. 8, 2016, his seventh bid to be elected Maricopa County Sheriff.

The challenger, Paul Penzone, a Democrat and a former Phoenix police sergeant who lost to Arpaio in 2012, won the sheriff’s election, 54.9 percent to 45.1 percent, running on a campaign designed to be sympathetic to Arizona’s growing Hispanic voter base.

Throughout the entire case, Perez pursued Arpaio with a vengeance.

On Jan. 5, 2012, when the Department of Justice dropped the initial criminal case against Arpaio in favor of pursuing the civil case, the Department of Justice sent the author an email, explaining, “If MCSO wants to debate the facts rather than fixing the problems stated in our findings, we will do so by way of litigation.”

According to information provided the author by a credible whistleblower, while the Department of Justice was prosecuting Arpaio from 2008 to 2010, the National Security Agency conducted electronic surveillance of the various Arizona-based federal judges on the case, as well as on Arpaio, and on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

At the same time, Department of Justice attorneys under the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder maintained an on-going telephone back-channel discussion with the federal judge assigned to handle the case.

That the Department of Justice conspired to defeat Arpaio is suggested by the timing of his criminal indictment.

In mid-October 2016, with the election approximately three weeks away, the Justice Department announced that lawyers were preparing to file criminal contempt of court charges against Arpaio for his alleged violation of Judge Stone’s orders in the Melendres case.

Then, on Nov. 4, 2016, four days before the election, Politico reported Soros had contributed $2 million to a Soros-funded PAC, Maricopa Strong, to defeat Arpaio.